Some more sad news to report, but out of respect to also greatness.

R&B singer and music icon Isaac Hayes has passed at 65. He was found unconscious at home.

I was shocked this afternoon to get the news of the apparent murder of English and African American Studies professor, Lindon Barrett.  He was apparently murdered this past week in his Long Beach, CA apartment.

Barrett was a wonderful scholar, teaching English, African American literature and Comparative literature at both UC Irvine and Riverside.  He's the author of the book Blackness and Value: Seeing Double and a Ford Fellow.

But more importantly he was a wonderful man and mentor.  He will be greatly missed.  To all his students, current and former, and to his family I offer my deepest sympathy.  

For more details on Professor Barrett, see this blog entry.  

"Libel of the dead is not an offence known to our law," read the 1887 court decision that dismissed a defamation of the dead suit. It continued, "The dead have no rights and can suffer no wrongs." That hasn't remained an absolute in the last 121 years, but the line on too much or too soon is still pretty difficult to cross.

Every day that I awaken to the obituary of one who was our political enemy in life, I know that the knives are out at Daily Kos, and it was no different this morning when I saw that Tony Snow has lost his battle with cancer.

Maybe its just age that is catching up with me. In my twenties I reveled in being a Front Page style character whom scandal made glow all over and a grisly murder sent packing merrily off with the other ghouls and minions of the newsroom to the nearest bar.

Or maybe its that the speed of technology has changed the comic timing of sarcastic reportage and comment on the shuffling off of mortal coils. When "two bits" follows "shave and a haircut" too closely the meaning gets lost. Maybe that's why, when the death of a Helms or a Falwell produces an immediate chorus of Louis Armstrong's You Rascal, You here at the great orange satan, I'm sad not only for the family who lost someone whom they loved but we couldn't. I'm sad for us, too.

Jesse Helms died this past week on July 4,2008 .The pundits and the blogs are on fire today for a eulogy. Either you loved him or hated him .

I think George Carlin would be amused that even following his death the mainstream media can’t bring itself to cover the truth about what he had to say. In the majority of the coverage about Carlin I’ve seen, the talking heads simply speak about his "seven words you can’t say on television" or his desire to "push the limits." They don’t want to discuss the dirty details of the truth and social commentary Carlin brilliantly vocalized. That’s what made Carlin a legend, not merely his desire to say "Fuck" on the radio.

Carlin said the media was a joke, and in remembering him, they’ve proven him right. How many networks have shown some of his most groundbreaking social commentary such as the following:

-Religion is the biggest load of bullshit ever sold.
-The U.S. loves to bomb countries filled with little brown people.
-Both political parties are owned and operated by corporations.
-Instead of putting drug dealers in jail, we should execute the bankers who launder the drug money.
-Golf is an elitist, pretentious sport and homeless people should be given the golf courses to live on.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

He was 71.  Apparently, it was an existing heart condition and he was in the hospital most of the day where he passed away.

Say what you will of his comedy (I, personally, had other favorites...I think I'm a bit too young to have identified with him the way many do), but he was one of those rare personalities that really wasn't going to listen to any bullshit from anyone.

On that count, he was truly rare and will be missed.  You don't often run across people who simply won't let you lie to them.

QUICK UPDATE:  A little sampling of Carlin's voice in one recent ridiculous episode of right wing "social conservatism."  

Enjoy: http://youtube.com/...

Style—go ahead talking about style.   You can tell where a man gets his style just as you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs or Ty Cobb his batting eye. Carl Sandburg – Chicago Poems

A lotta style. A sexy Soviet secret agent dancer, an old-time movie-gangster glamour moll, the thousand years Scottish-glen mystery woman. An over-the-top beauty with enormous sex appeal and the best legs evahhhh in the business has left the stage.

General William E. Odom had a heart attack and died at age 75 on Friday.

General Odom was one of those rare flag officers who have what it takes to see the truth wherever it hides and tell this truth to power as he recently did in Congress and in Countdown.  

(Countdown You Tube links below the fold)

In April 28th 2007 he gave the Democratic Response to a Bush address on Iraq

How I wish he could have served in an Obama administration.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Please join me in remembering a great Wobbly and folksinger, Utah Phillips, who died on May 23.

It doesn't seem that long ago I looked up at that sprightly, solid man as a six-year-old child, and gazed in awe across the vast expanse of his cherry-wood desk to report that I was, indeed, doing well.  It was a different time, and children were not allowed the luxury of feigned ignorance if they did not possess it.

My pediatrician - Oscar Janiger - owed his notoriety to what has become the common knowledge of today: that it was Albert Hofmann who discovered LSD, and spread its use throughout the world (true or not, as you like).

102 years old.  That, in itself, must have been an incredible trip for Dr. Hofmann.  At 56 I can't even imagine what 102 must feel like.  But yet today, as we all must, he died of a heart attack.

Read this New York Times obit for a real role model for the rest of us: http://www.nytimes.com/...

In Memoriam: Abe Osheroff

Our fearless leader wrote yesterday about the New York Times story of a blogger who died.http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/8/164419/0145/753/491469

I knew that blogger. Russell Shaw was a dedicated journalist, a good friend.

There is a diary about the death of Charlton Heston on the recent diaries list, which is rather short and in my opinion rather inappropriately focusing on his participation in the NRA ("Gun Nut" was used in the diarist's writeup, and the commentators went on and on about his having a "gun in his hand" when he died).  I think it is rather sad that someone who had such a vital movie career is only discussed on this site as someone known only for his recent political activity.  This was a man who suffered the awfulness of Alzheimer's at the end of his life, and one who produced some very successful films.  I wanted to look back at some of my favourites of his films here.

OK OK I will post a link as soon as I see one (UPDATE: http://www.showbuzz.cbsnews.com/...
but I see on CBS News that great actor and gun-nut Charlton Heston has passed away.
And I can't resist breaking a scoop on Daily Kos so here is an open thread !

Let's use this thread to also discuss actors one likes until one finds out what kind of political nutdouchebaggery they are advocating.

My vote: Sean Astin from Lord of the Rings.
Read the following for explanation
http://slog.thestranger.com/...

I'll keep this short, because frankly, I never met him.

Professor Ashley Morris is one of the wittiest, sharpest bloggers on life in New Orleans, post-Katrina.  For the past few years, I've been making it a point to check out his blog two or three times a week, which is how I learned that on Wednesday, New Orleans lost a champion.

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Arthur Clarke (who called me a colleague and friend, despite our only having met by mail) passed on today, after ninety years of a life that only could have happened in the century and civilization that he helped to shape.

Arthur has long and deservedly been called one of the finest "hard" science fiction authors, for good reason.  From the beginning of his career as a writer, he explored frontiers of human knowledge, pondering the implications of everything from cetacean intelligence to planetology.  From the logic of John Von Neuman’s universal self-replicator to the possible motives of beings far in advance of ourselves.  

And yet, what most intrigues me about Arthur’s work is something else -- his ongoing fascination with human destiny -- a term seemingly at-odds with the scientific worldview.

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When I was a kid, girls were supposed to be, well, girly.  Girls played 4-square, jumped rope, loved horses, had sleep overs.  They read books about girl detectives and wrote in their diaries about boys and their stinky parents.  Girls liked girl things.  Boys liked boy things.

I was a Weird Girl.  I read science fiction.

Howard Metzenbaum died in Florida (h/t Davybaby) last night.  Metzenbaum, senator from Ohio, a true liberal and hero of working people and consumers everywhere, was the kind of senator who put his love of country and its citizens above any personal agenda.

It was diaried last night by Davybaby but didn't get much attention. Senator Metzenbaum deserves our profound gratitude and respect.